12 Responses to “Yay, Sox!”

And by “New England,” I mean north of Hartford. Hartford is the dividing line. The weather even changes south of Hartford.

CT is definitely a “battleground state” regarding Yankees/Red Sox loyalties, but CT residents place the dividing line between predominantly Yankee versus predominantly Red Sox followers as not being Hartford per se, but the Connecticut River. Not North/South, but East/West. East of the River- Sox leaning. West of the River- Yankees leaning.

In support of my point of view, using Massachusetts as west as possible from the Connecticut River, there is an indication that there are a fair number of Yankees fans in the Berkshires. Places in the Berkshires are close to being equidistant from NYC and Boston.

The Berkshires and also NW CT are playgrounds for rich New Yorkers. Thus more Yankees fans.

I had a classmate in grad school who was from Bristol CT- a diehard Yankees fan. And hater of the Red Sox. [In fact, she hated the Sox more than a Bronx native I knew here in TX. Which I understood.] She also saw the division as East/West of the river.

Back in the day, her grandmother in New Britain was one of a group of women who provided room and board for some members of the Red Sox farm team in New Britain. One of the women had Wade Boggs living in her house. She found out that Wade Boggs was cheating on his wife- and chewed Wade out. So what Wade Boggs did years later with Margo, when he was a star with the Red Sox, was no surprise.

Coincidentally, Wade Boggs used to live in the same condo complex in Saugus as my sister.

CT is actually a three-way battleground (I used to call it the Baseball Bermuda Triangle)– don’t forget the Mets fans. (Yes, Virginia, there is a National League, and there are NL fans, even in New England). My landlady has been a fervent Mets fan ever since the team was started (I’ve always been careful not to mention the ’62 Mets, and she in turn has been tactful about the Phillies’ downhill slide since 2008).

We lived in Hartford in 1978 when the Yankees and Red Sox played that tie-breaker. Cheers and groans from open windows seemed about evenly divided when the Sox lost it. Now we’re in deep Yankee territory in upstate NY –but much happier than most of our neighbors this season!

Yankee/Red Sox loyalties in CT depend on the era as well. When I was growing up in Hartford in the 1950s not only were the Yankees completely dominant but they were stacked with kid favorites like Yogi Berra, Mickey Mantle and Whitey Ford while the laggard Red Sox had only Ted Williams, a great hitter but a grumpy old man (not liked by the press either). Over the years things gradually evened out and I suspect that since 2000 (especially since 2004) there are more Red Sox than Yankee fans there now.

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About Me

Previously a lifelong Democrat, born in New York and living in New England, surrounded by liberals on all sides, I've found myself slowly but surely leaving the fold and becoming that dread thing: a neocon. Read More >>